included a studio for himself where he put
together a show of his fine-art painting. That
was when the fun began. Offbeat commissions started rolling in: a mural of elephants
for a building on Winter Street in downtown
Boston, a watercolor for the old Ritz-Carlton
hotel dining menu, orders to paint a building “to look like a turtle” at the Franklin Park
Zoo, where he also created a snakes’ lair, and,
at the Stone Zoo, backdrops for animal cages.
His janitoring days were over.